Law enforcement officers may not initiate a warrantless search of a motor vehicle based solely on an alert from a specially trained police dog, according to a ruling by judges on Florida’s 5th District Court of Appeal.
Judges determined that canines cannot distinguish between cannabis-specific products that the state has deemed legal (e.g., medical cannabis and hemp-derived products) and those that it has not.
They opined: “At the time when [the police canine] alerted to a target substance in the [motor] vehicle, the police officers had no way of knowing whether [the dog] had detected an illegal substance (marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamines) or a legal substance, namely … hemp or medical marijuana that was properly prescribed and in the possession of a bona fide medical marijuana card holder. [The police dog] was trained to alert in the same manner when he encountered any of those substances; thus, … the dog’s alert did not tell them which target substance(s) had been detected. Whether the substance [the canine] smelled was legal or illegal was not readily apparent, and thus his alert, alone, could not provide the probable cause needed to justify a warrantless search.”
A prior ruling by the same court had previously determined, “The incremental legalization of certain types of cannabis at both the federal and state level has reached the point that its plain smell does not immediately indicate the presence of an illegal substance.”
NORML Board Member Nikki Fried, who chairs the Florida Democratic Party, hailed the decision as “a tremendous win for criminal justice reform and cannabis legalization.”
Courts in several states where cannabis is legal for either medical or adult-use purposes – including Delaware, Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Vermont – have previously determined that the odor of marijuana emanating from a motor vehicle is not by itself sufficient grounds to justify a warrantless search. By contrast, judges for the Tennessee Supreme Court recently upheld that an alert from a drug-sniffing dog justifies a broader search of a defendant’s automobile, despite acknowledging that dogs cannot distinguish between legal hemp products and marijuana.
The case is Ford v. Florida.
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